A shocking idea which will ruin Astro darkness

AstroStew · Aug 26, 2025, 08:38 AM

Pie in the sky nonsense and will never happen

Never say never😟

To date, I see $26.5 million in funding, and probably $40 million++ in annual salaries [Edit: my bad… bad math, probably really closer to $4-$7 million] of personnel. Here are a few thoughts:

• they’ll burn through their May 2025 funding by end of 2025.

• there are a lot of references to having a satellite in orbit, 2023, 2025, now 2026. Still on track for Spring 2026? Oh, and who’s paying for THAT?

• at some point, investors get tired of waiting for payoff, company will whittle down to two or three essential employees, then fold. Once funding is gone, everyone had their fun run at a startup and made a gazillion bucks, leaving investors pissed off.

• If you think about it, $26 million is peanuts, and could in no way be worth anything other than early stage proof of concept. Being energy, this company will need billions - and they certainly could market a viable energy source at that financial level. That will be the dangerous transition.

The only scary part is that they make reference to funding from Saudi royalty.

They’re saying how the costs of orbiting a payload is getting cheaper. So there’s the option of launching it on a Space X and it’ll blow up.

Aiding agriculture by longer days? Bull****. I’m not even going to do the math on that one.

Let’s hope this doesn’t fly.

Dark Skies,
Mark

EDIT: financial issues aside, what this really threatens is the existence of wildlife.

I wish I would have never read this lol between the clouds tonight and now more dumb ideas from human beings, I felt my blood pressure rise and saw some of my hair turn grey!!

But on another note, if anyone wants to help out, I’m starting a Kickstarter for a company that blasts annoying and pointless satellites out of the sky with lasers!!

On a more somber note, as much as I want to laugh at how dumb of an idea this is and say it will never happen, the sad fact is eventually something like this will happen and it will disconnect us even more with nature. Why do people insist on making this energy issue harder than it is?? crap like this should be an absolute last resort, but alas!! capitalism!!!

This proposal is incredibly crazy on so many levels that it’s hard to believe that it’s serious. It would be disastrous for astronomy, wildlife, the environment, and (in my view) humanity’s sense of well being. I can’t sleep well when it’s light outside and I know that I’m not alone. This project shouldn’t get any further than a piece of paper and even that that should get tossed out.

John

If I am not completely mistaken this was actually tried by Soviet Russia. For very obvious reasons the cost/benefit didn’t work out.

Oh, you want proof that the idea has not been thought out even as far as basics? They mention on the website that a key benefit for agriculture is, “…ensuring crops receive optimal light for growth even during inclement weather.” Huh? It will work when it’s cloudy? I thought clouds happened at night, too…

Jared Willson · Aug 27, 2025, 07:13 PM

Based on their estimates, the light provided would be 5-6x the brightness of the full moon. Using back-of-the-napkin calculations, that is still 70,000x dimmer than sunlight. So, if you could run this at night in a location that gets an equal number of clear days and nights per year, this would increase your annual solar output by 0.0015%. I can not imagine how this would be economically viable. Even ignoring environmental impact, I just don’t get the business model. Heck, I don’t even understand why one would want to run it at night rather than during the day. Wouldn’t I get the same benefits during the day? Why not run it in daylight, too? Then I’d get an entire 0.003% more energy out of my solar array!

Maybe I’m not understanding something—it wouldn’t be the first time and I pray it’s not the last—but my biggest question isn’t whether this is a good idea, it’s wondering how the hell they ever got $26M in series A funding. What could possibly be the purpose? Do crops really care about a 0.0015% increase in sunlight? If you could find a way to remove one airplane contrail per day from any given sky location it would probably help more.

Jared

Thanks for doing the math for me, Jared.

Mark Fox · Aug 26, 2025, 07:01 PM

Aiding agriculture by longer days? Bull****. I’m not even going to do the math on that one.

Mark